


Red Coward

by Manuscriptor



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Heavy gore, True Demon Forms, seriously though it's gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:13:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25215268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manuscriptor/pseuds/Manuscriptor
Summary: Beetlejuice has an easy life with the Deetz, doesn't have to deal with the drama of Hell or the Netherworld.But when an old foe comes calling, Beetlejuice won't hesitate to protect his new family.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	Red Coward

**Author's Note:**

> i am dead serious about the gore and body horror, please be careful reading, it is extremely graphic at times

Beetlejuice didn’t often go to the Netherworld. 

There wasn’t any need to. 

He hung around the Deetz’s house, made mischief where he wanted, and lived generally unbothered by the world. The Netherworld was red tape, blue tape bullshit that didn’t allow for goofs or pranks or shenanigans, and as far as Beetlejuice was concerned, it was completely boring outside the fact that it was . . . well, literal hell. 

And no one in the Netherworld cared about him. Generally. 

There were a couple times that ghosts or the stray demon would chance across Beetlejuice, but they were taken care of with a half-assed line and a toothy grin. The suckers believed everything he said generally, as long as he touted his demonhood and claimed an authority he didn’t have. It was easy. 

Life was easy. 

Until he heard the murmur of his name, three times, carried to him by a warm breeze that he could only assume came from hell. 

He didn’t sleep, didn’t need to, so when it was night, he usually stayed on the Deetz’s roof, entertaining himself through dimensional portals and torturing the neighbors with nightmares. The whisper of his name made him sit straight up though, cock his head to the side, and listen a little bit harder. 

And there it was again. His name three times, maybe even a bit louder than before. Clearly from the Netherworld, though Beetlejuice didn’t recognize the voice. 

He glanced down through the shingles and wood, making sure the small family was asleep beneath him, soundly breathing and as safe as they could be, before letting himself dissolve into a cloud of smoke and get pulled towards whoever said his name. 

Beetlejuice should have guessed. 

He should have known the moment his name was spoken. 

And yet, he was still somehow surprised when he materialized in the Netherworld and he stood before a smug looking demon smiling at him like he had trapped Beetlejuice himself, acting like he had invented the _toaster_. 

“Rigel,” Beetlejuice said. Nonchalant. Uncaring. Unbothered. 

The other demon was seething. Steam was literally pouring off of him just by standing on the slightly cooler marble of whatever building they were in. Every step hissed and popped, and the stone under his feet was actually starting to crack with the heat. 

“ _Heike-boshi_ ,” Rigel spat, narrowing his glowing white eyes and visibly growing a few inches. 

Beetlejuice just rolled his eyes. “We’re still using that old name?” he said with a laugh and a shrug. He tried to keep his tone joking. 

Rigel didn’t seem to see the humor. “I made a promise,” he said. 

Beetlejuice snorted. “Yeah, like a million years ago.”

Rigel’s face twisted into a snarl. “We were chosen as patrons!” he said. “And I demand to see your face and fight like our people did. The time has passed. I see you’ve grown fat in my absence, thinking you had escaped my talons. But a promise is a promise is binding, and I won’t break my word.” 

Beetlejuice just grimaced. “That was hundreds of years ago,” he said. “Our people don’t fight anymore, and neither do we. It’s something in the past.” 

“You would make me an oath-breaker?!” Rigel said, swelling even larger. 

His eyes flared and white-silver feathers sprouted from above his eyes, long, curled, and burning. His feet cracked to talons, and with a snarl of pain or anger—Beetlejuice couldn’t tell which—his neck cracked longer. His entire form wavered, as large as a grizzly bear, and he towered over Beetlejuice. Heat radiated off of him in waves, making Beetlejuice actually take a step back. The marble beneath Rigel finally buckled, and a huge crack snapped open, trailing from his feet towards Beetlejuice.

And Beetlejuice could feel his own form wavering, wanting to challenge Rigel and defend himself. But he held himself back. So far. If he could still talk his way out of this, he wanted too. Rigel wasn’t wrong, Beetlejuice was lazier than he had been. And that wasn’t a bad thing. 

Beetlejuice liked being fat and lazy. 

Rigel was the one with his panties in a twist.

“I keep my promises,” Rigel said. His voice was a deep grumble. Or maybe it was high pitched and grating. Or maybe it was normal and the same. Or maybe it was all of that at once. “I am no oath-breaker half-coward burn-out.” 

Beetlejuice forced himself to be apathetic, hands in his pockets, uncaring. The demon before him was hardly a threat. 

Rigel paced back and forth, clearly angry that his opponent wasn’t nearly as put off as he was. “I watch you,” he finally said. “For _years_. I see the little mortals you’ve adopted, so different from our clans. They are pathetic and soft, like you.” 

It was the first time Beetlejuice let his words get to him. He stiffened and glared, narrowing his eyes. 

“Leave them out of it.” 

“If you will not fight me,” Rigel said with a serpent’s grin. “I will take them instead. They will burn in my stomach for a million years. They will wish for death and get nothing. I shall regurgitate them and play with their bodies until they beg for mercy as mindless dumb servants. I will break them, like the toys they are.” 

He lunged upwards, intending to jump from hell and make his promise a reality. 

Beetlejuice caught him halfway like an animal, and suddenly Rigel was an animal, twisting and writing in his grip, snapping at his face as he transformed. An owl and a bear and a snake and a dog. His muzzle had three mouths that drooled magma and molten glass. His eyes glowed and hissed where they were exposed to open air. His talons or claws or fangs were three times Beetlejuice’s size and tore through his physical form like it was paper. 

And Beetlejuice had just enough of his wits about him to take them to space. 

No point in racking up paperwork by destroying buildings in hell. At least out in the open atmosphere, there was less of a chance of collateral damage. Beetlejuice even had the decency to take them out of the Milky Way. 

And he was just in time too. 

Rigel had reached his full size and he was burning. He curled around the planets like a snake, out-shining every star in the immediate vicinity. Three snapping maws gaped from his muzzle and even more trailed down his chest and stomach, curling around his limbs and legs. The feathers of his face were licks and tongues of flames that burned silver blue. Eight eyes circled his head, floating outside his skull like a broken fallen halo, and with a single squeeze of his sinewy body, he crushed a planet to dust. He didn’t even seem to notice, like it was an idle accident, just winding his way closer and snapping at Beetlejuice’s face. 

And Beetlejuice was growing too, before he could even stop himself. It was like his body wanted to fight. He shoved and kicked away from Rigel just to give himself space.

It hurt when every vertebrae in his spine snapped and elongated. It ached when his neck grew a thousand feet in a single second. It stung with a hundred new pairs of claws and hands and arms broke through the skin of his chest and stomach and neck, grabbing at the world and latching onto stars and meteorites and pulling him along. And, when the pressure and pain built and grew in his skull, Beetlejuice had to manually grope at his face and break his eye sockets open to let them bulge and pop and gape as a dozen more eyes grew into place. 

Pincers sprouted from his throat, splitting his cheeks open as they flexed through open air. Every scale and plate burned his flesh, consuming him and protecting him as he died and regrew every second he was alive. 

He hissed as Rigel, rearing up to let the hundreds of hands and arms on his underbelly grab and claw at him. 

Rigel just snapped back, blue-silver and hot with hatred. 

It was Beetlejuice who lunged first this time, pushing off three different planets and sending them crashing into each other as he collided with Rigel and they tore into each other. 

They swept through a cloud of stars, sending a dozen of them into supernova at once. The gaping mouths on Rigel’s throat and arms snapped closed on sections of Beetlejuice’s chest, and Rigel howled in victory at drawing first blood. Beetlejuice clawed into him, and their wounds burned with the heat of the dying stars. 

“ _Faded_ ,” Rigel growled at him, the words coming from three different mouths in a disjointed harmony. “ _Dying. Dim. I should have killed you long ago, Red Coward. Pale dwarf._ ” 

“ _Count_ ,” Beetlejuice hissed back, digging claws and pincers and fingers into the wet, pulsing throats of Rigel’s open mouths. “ _Court jester. Dance at the feet of your betters, true demons and rulers of Hell and Inferno. Curse my name and I will feast on your corpse. Salt and waterfall, Pathetic One_.” 

Rigel gurgled in surprise as Beetlejuice drove his incisors deep into the central mouth right below his jaw. The teeth of the mouth gnashed down, digging into Beetlejuice’s face and drawing even more blood. And Beetlejuice tore through the soft tissue of the inside of Rigel’s mouth, driving his face deep down the other demon’s throat, choking him with his own body and blood. 

Rigel’s entire body went taut, scrabbling at Beetlejuice and trying to tear him away, kicking and shredding his underbelly like a panicking tomcat that had been pinned by a foe three times too large. Beetlejuice had a hundred hands though and an iron grip on his prey. Their bodies tumbled through another galaxy of stars, rolling over each other, and Beetlejuice could feel them burn through his back as they imploded. 

He wasn’t going to let his prey get away. 

He dug in deeper, digging down into Rigel’s throat. Their blood was hot and burning and boiling, cooking his eyes and flowing into his ears. Blind and deaf, Beetlejuice only knew one thing and that was shoving himself as far down Rigel’s throat as possible. He wanted him to choke on his words and insults. 

And Rigel was choking. 

His other mouths gaped for breath and howled for mercy. He knew his mistake. Realized it too late. Beetlejuice would make sure he died with it. 

With a final heave, he latched his pincers around Rigel’s heart and tore upwards. Rigel’s throat prolapsed with a squelch of tearing muscles as Beetlejuice reared free. He held his trophy proud and high and gave his body a moment to heal. 

He blinked through the mucus crusting over his eyes as his vision finally returned and Beetlejuice could finally stare down at the convulsing body of an unworthy foe. Several of Rigel’s mouths were still latched onto him, locking up in rigor mortis. Beetlejuice had to tear off dozens of hundreds of arms pushing free. 

He left Rigel to burn out among the stars. 

He was tired and hurting, the victory was stale, and home was millions of light years away. 

By the time Beetlejuice limped his way back to the Deetz’s house, he was still only half healed and his human form looked worse for wear than it usually did. Everything hurt as bones broke and shattered as they shrank back down. The roof didn’t seem as safe as it normally did, out under the clear night sky of millions of stars. 

So Beetlejuice dragged himself inside, down the hallway, wounded but victorious. He collapsed in Lydia’s room, careful of her carpet and rugs and things so that he didn’t ruin anything. It was the only place he felt safe enough to heal. 

He didn’t want to bother her, but as he settled down with a groan, broken ribs grinding against each other, Lydia shifted in her sleep, rolling over and tossing and turning. 

Beetlejuice held his breath through the pain, scared she would wake up and see him and he would have to explain what had happened. 

But a moment later, she settled down with a sigh, still asleep and blissfully unaware. Beetlejuice breathed a sigh of relief then and closed his eyes. He didn’t need to sleep— _couldn’t_ sleep—but he was exhausted.

He didn’t want Lydia to see him like this. He wanted her to think that Hell was the funny, bizarre place they had visited together with maybe a little too much bureaucratic paperwork, just enough blood and gore, but mostly fun times outside the stereotype or torture and pain. She didn’t have to know the truth—the mad-scrabble for power and the disdain between demons and hell-folk, the bloodshed and twisting daggers and teeth and death wishes. 

In the morning, he would be back to normal and everything would be okay again. 

Lydia would never know. 

And that was how it was supposed to be. 

**Author's Note:**

> Rigel referencing the fact that two clans in Japan claimed both himself and Betelguese (the stars) as their symbols and fought a legendary war against each other (1180-1185). Literally, the wiki for both of these stars are both so interesting and i am in love with them both.
> 
> hey look, i'm on tumblr @manuscript-or


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